2020: The Year Without Exhibitions?

If you’re like many in the coffee and tea industry, you rely in varying degrees upon exhibitions and conferences throughout the year as an excellent support to your sales efforts, to learn about innovations, to keep on top of business opportunities, and to meet old friends and potential new customers. And like most, you’ve noticed that COVID-19 virtually wiped out this marketing, sales, and learning asset — at least for the first half of 2020.

“We call it the last conference of the year,” said Emerson Leonard, sales director of STiR magazine about the annual National Coffee Association (NCA) conference held in early March, which was preceded two days before by AMI’s Single-Serve Capsules US Conference in the same city.  At that time, even though events in Europe and the US were still scheduled, many in China and Singapore were already canceled due to what was then called the Wuhan coronavirus but was officially renamed COVID-19 (SARS-COV-2).

Only less than two months ago (as of this writing), FHA HoReCa, the biannual food, beverage, and hospitality exhibition was in the final stages of preparation for its 2020 event in Singapore. This year was to be the first time the popular FHA (Food & Hotel Asia) was split into two major exhibitions, both occupying the entire Singapore Expo complex:  FHA HoReCa and FHA Food & Beverages, with former being held at the first week of March and the latter held the last week of March.

On January 30, the organizers sent each exhibitor personalized landing page links to encourage customers to attend; on February 1, the final guidelines for deliveries to the hall were sent to exhibitors and sponsors. Only four days later, the organizers informed the industry that “due the concerns about COVID-19, FHA HoReCa would be postponed until July 13-16, 2020.”

“This decision has been reached after extensive consultation with the industry considering the challenging climate in the hospitality and foodservice equipment sectors caused by the restrictions on travel and tourism across Asia-Pacific,” said Martyn Cox, event director, FHA-HoReCa of Informa Markets, the organizing group. This postponement was most notable “first” of many major exhibitions around the world that followed with cancellations and postponements.

A few days before FHA announced its postponement, the organizers of Hotelex Shanghai, the massive annual hospitality, foodservice, and fine food exhibition sent a message to exhibitors that “some changes and delays [might] occur” for the show. With several halls of coffee-related exhibitors, Hotelex Shanghai is arguably the largest coffee industry event in China.

Around mid-February, Informa Markets, also the organizer of Hotelex, announced that the show — which, in 2019, featured 230,000 sqm of exhibition space, 2,567 exhibitors, and 159,267 professional visitors — was postponed to June 15-18, 2020 at the same location. At this point, STiR coffee and tea’s online events calendar began to disintegrate; one by one, the exhibitions and conferences listed there were canceled or postponed.

On February 10, MICE Melbourne, the most popular annual coffee exhibition held “down under,” sent out an email with the subject heading “Making the Most of Melbourne” to exhibitors planning their upcoming visit to the city. In 2020, MICE Melbourne presents the World Barista Championship and World Brewer’s Cup, with an estimated 100 competitors taking the stage. On March 3, another email said, “The Melbourne International Coffee Expo and the World Coffee Championships are scheduled to proceed as planned.”

Only seven days later, the industry was notified that “Following the recent announcement from [the premier of Victoria, Australia] and the measures that will be taken by our state government to mitigate the risk of COVID-19, we have made the decision to reschedule [MICE Melbourne],” according to a statement from the organizers and sponsors. Two days after that, organizers of Specialty Coffee Association’s (SCA) popular European event, World of Coffee — this year being held in Warsaw, Poland — announced it would be postponed until October, same venue.

“As announced on March 11, [SCA] has been working with our partner venue in Poland to review options for postponing World of Coffee in response to the global COVID-19 outbreak, said Yannis Apostolopoulos, chief executive officer, SCA. “Today, we are announcing an agreement with our partners … to postpone World of Coffee to October 15-17, 2020, the only dates available in 2020.”

At this point mid-March, only one show remained on STiR’s event calendar for the March-July period, and that was SCA’s Global Coffee Expo and Re:co Symposium scheduled for April 22-25, for Portland, Oregon. Although it was a foregone conclusion to everyone in the industry that the show had to be canceled, as no one would be able to attend, SCA sent out an unclear message on March 18 to participants:

“I want to take this opportunity to give you as much information as legally possible,” said Apostolopoulos in a video message, which indicated difficulties negotiating alternative arrangements with the hall and legal obstacles to postponing the event.

“Despite CDC’s recommendations, the state of Oregon has issued orders that only cancel events until April 14, which would leave SCA, the convention center, our exhibitors, hotels, and the dozens of other businesses who make expo possible every year in legal limbo with contradictory directions from the federal and state governments.” However, a few days later, SCA Portland was canceled outright, citing an inability to reach an agreement on alternative dates with the exhibition center.

“We are heartbroken that we will not be able to see you in Portland this year, but we look forward to seeing you in New Orleans in 2021,” said Apostolopoulos, referring to the location of SCA’s already scheduled annual US event for 2021.

If virus concerns go away – soon – and it is safe for coffee and tea people to go back on the road, it’s clear that many will be spending much of late September through early December attending regularly scheduled events combined now with the re-scheduled events from earlier in the year. For example, in the last week of September, the already scheduled shows Specialty Coffee & Tea Asia (Singapore), Global Dubai Tea Forum, and Single Serve Capsules Berlin might now be competing with visitors to the rescheduled SIAL China being held at the same time. In the last week of October, the already scheduled SCAJ 2020 (Tokyo) and Xiamen Tea Fair (China)  are now competing for global visitors and exhibitors with the rescheduled World Tea Expo (Denver) and World of Coffee (Warsaw) all being held at the same time.

Even more of a challenge for organizers and participants will be the first week of November, when the already scheduled and popular Café Show Seoul is now being held at the same time as the rescheduled MICE Melbourne and Gulfood Manufacturing, the latter of which has now been combined with Gulfhost, rescheduled from earlier in the year.

Many exhibitions took the later-in-the-year postponement approach; others skipped ahead to 2021, such as the ASIC Coffee science conference (Montpelier, France); FHA Food & Beverage (Singapore), the second half of the split FHA shows; and possibly the biggest move of all, Interpack, the major packaging industry exhibition held every three years in Dusseldorf, now postponed from early May to February 28-March 3, 2021.

We’ll know shortly if those postponing to 2021 were the wiser, noting that FHA HoReCa, originally scheduled for early March and rescheduled for mid-July has just announced another “postponement” — with no new dates offered this time.

EDITOR’S NOTE: A even more ominous sign that 2020 might become “The Year Without Exhibitions” arrived by WhatsApp at STiR magazine literally as the magazine was going to press. The International Coffee Organization’s World Coffee Conference and Exhibition, held every four years and slated for September in Bangalore, has been indefinitely postponed.